1/22 UPDATE: Four months ago, Richard Painter began viciously attacking Sarah Braasch, as part of his unhinged vendetta against me (one of his own Minnesota colleagues had to call out his lies about me!). Despite acknowledging Ms. Braasch's mental health problems, Painter has continued to harass her on a regular basis. As I wrote previously in response to Painter's abuse of Braach:
Ms. Braasch was vilified in the media as a "racist" in in 2018 in the misnamed "napping while Black" incident at Yale: Ms. Braasch had called campus police about an unknown person (who turned out to be Black--Ms. Braasch couldn't see who it was, a fact not reported at the time) sleeping in the common area on her floor in the middle of the night (Ms. Braasch was the only resident of that floor). Yale, in fact, withdrew racial harassment charges against Ms. Braasch, a fact which also received almost no media attention. Yale law and philosophy professors (including Alan Schwartz and Scott Shapiro) have vouched for Ms. Braasch's character, and her commitment to racial justice and civil rights. The journalist Cathy Young, after a thorough investigation, wrote a lengthy article about Ms. Braasch (including her history of personal and family trauma, and her past issues with safety in Yale housing), which--while hardly uncritical of Ms. Braasch--exonerated her fully from the charge of racial animus (consistent, of course, with Yale dropping the charges against her).
I never described any of this as a "hoax," just a terrible misunderstanding.
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We recently noted the outrageous treatment of Sarah Braasch by Yale, but now comes a similar story from Smith College, where an alleged racial incident attracts wide media attention, but then turns out to be nothing of the kind. The only difference this time is that the NYT has noted that the original story was a fake:
In midsummer of 2018, Oumou Kanoute, a Black student at Smith College, recounted a distressing American tale: She was eating lunch in a dorm lounge when a janitor and a campus police officer walked over and asked her what she was doing there.
The officer, who could have been carrying a “lethal weapon,” left her near “meltdown,” Ms. Kanoute wrote on Facebook, saying that this encounter continued a yearlong pattern of harassment at Smith.
“All I did was be Black,” Ms. Kanoute wrote. “It’s outrageous that some people question my being at Smith College, and my existence overall as a woman of color.”
The college’s president, Kathleen McCartney, offered profuse apologies and put the janitor on paid leave. “This painful incident reminds us of the ongoing legacy of racism and bias,” the president wrote, “in which people of color are targeted while simply going about the business of their ordinary lives.”
The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN picked up the story of a young female student harassed by white workers. The American Civil Liberties Union, which took the student’s case, said she was profiled for “eating while Black.”
Less attention was paid three months later when a law firm hired by Smith College to investigate the episode found no persuasive evidence of bias. Ms. Kanoute was determined to have eaten in a deserted dorm that had been closed for the summer; the janitor had been encouraged to notify security if he saw unauthorized people there. The officer, like all campus police, was unarmed.
Will there be repercussions for Ms. Kanoute's conduct in this matter? Consider:
Three weeks after the incident at Tyler House [where Ms. Kanoute had taken her lunch], Ms. Blair, the cafeteria worker, received an email from a reporter at The Boston Globe asking her to comment on why she called security on Ms. Kanoute for “eating while Black.” That puzzled her; what did she have to do with this?
The food services director called the next morning. “Jackie,” he said, “you’re on Facebook.” She found that Ms. Kanoute had posted her photograph, name and email, along with that of Mr. Patenaude, a 21-year Smith employee and janitor.
“This is the racist person,” Ms. Kanoute wrote of Ms. Blair, adding that Mr. Patenaude too was guilty. (He in fact worked an early shift that day and had already gone home at the time of the incident.) Ms. Kanoute also lashed the Smith administration. “They’re essentially enabling racist, cowardly acts.”
Ms. Blair has lupus, a disease of the immune system, and stress triggers episodes. She felt faint. “Oh my God, I didn’t do this,” she told a friend. “I exchanged a hello with that student and now I’m a racist.”
Ms. Blair was born and raised and lives in Northampton with her husband, a mechanic, and makes about $40,000 a year. Within days of being accused by Ms. Kanoute, she said, she found notes in her mailbox and taped to her car window. “RACIST” read one. People called her at home. “You should be ashamed of yourself,” a caller said. “You don’t deserve to live,” said another.
Of course, the NYT story itself will have consequences for Ms. Kanoute, and will hopefully help deter others before they make reckless allegations. Now when will the NYT write a piece correcting the record on Ms. Braasch's ordeal and about her reckless accuser Lolade Siyonbola? Isn't there enough actual racist misconduct without having to concoct sensational incidents?
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